Re:Water staying in atmospheres.
on
Brine on Mars?
·
· Score: 1
The molecular weight factor goes beyond H2 and H2O. Consider: MW Oxygen=32 MW Carbon Dioxide=44
Mars atmosphere is heavy on the CO2 for a reason: it's gravity is weak enough to allow anything lighter (except maybe oxygen) to escape, given the right collisions in the upper atmosphere. If a CO2 molecule whacks a water molecule from behind, it could go into orbit.
The water in the soil also makes sense from my freshman chemistry. Solutions of water with soluble solids undergo "freezing point depression" and "boiling point elevation". I'm not sure what the underlying cause of these effects is, it seems to result in brine reaching a concentration in the soil where it is too old to rock'n'roll (boil/evaporate) and too young to die (freeze).
In the study, the researchers discovered that rats exposed to a 60-hertz field for 24 hours showed significant DNA damage, and rats exposed for 48 hours showed even more breaks in brain cell DNA strands.
Just how strong was the field? Just about all of us spend all of our lives in the presence of a 60 Hz field generated by the power grid and the wiring in our homes and businesses, especially those of us who live or work near high-tension wires. And we're bombarded by all sorts of other EMR from radio & TV stations, wireless networks, computers, cordless phones, microwave ovens, trains, planes, automobiles, and other electronic toys, gizmos and doodads.
And in related news, two Florida DUI offenders are suing over this issue of ownership (one of the plaintiffs owns a business with a fleet of vehicles, and the law apparently requires igntion interlocks on all of them) and also double-jeopardy, because the local ignition interlock law passed after they had completed their sentences.
Nope, it says "one or more languages", so all that is required are two separate pieces of code in one document, not that they have to be in different languages.
Even the MS Autoplay feature itself may be prior art. The earliest patent mentioned above (5,597,307) was filed in May 1995, and I'm sure that a Win 95 beta with Autoplay was already available at that time. For that matter, what about Win 3.1 or OS/2?
In 10 or 12 years, after everybody is totally dependent on Open Source, IBM could pursue an SCO-like strategy and make it stick:
"There's all this open-source software out there that violates our patents. Either pay up, remove the offending code, or discontinue the use of the offending software."
Since no OpenSource licenses indemnify against IP violations, and IBM's protection under patent law would be much stronger than SCO's copyright claims, most users will be SOL.
It isn't Open source that threatens the US continued ability to compete, it's the internet, combined with US immigration policy combined with the unequal distribution of wealth in the world.
If Open Source didn't exist, all the big corporations would still be outsourcing to India, China, etc. They just would be used to develop proprietary code. Even with open source in existence, non-Open companies like Microsoft, HP and EDS still do it.
The jobs are leaving now because of the difference in wages and because they CAN leave now. Before the spread of the internet and free trade, the barriers to offshore program development were prohibitive.
The point of voting Libertarian isn't to actually get them elected. It's to give 5-10% of the vote to them so that the other parties have to recognize that they're in danger. One party or the other will co-opt Libertarian platform issues if the party starts swinging elections, even if they don't win any.
Extending your analogy of security flaws in a house:
Suppose you are a gun owner (consider the guns analogous to credit card information on a commercial database: if they get stolen they affect other people) and accidentally forget to lock your door one day (analogous to truly bad security practices at some sites).
Now suppose a neighbor notices that the door is unlocked and goes and sits in your living room to prevent anyone from stealing the guns. When you get back home, he threatens to report you to the police for not securing your guns properly. Do you report him to the police for trespassing in your home?
This isn't precisely analogous to the extortionist at Best Buy, but it does mirror many of the scenarios where a "white-hat" hacker found a blatant security risk and was punished for it.
Incidentally, the Best Buy case is a variation of extortion emails that have been targetting various companies, particularly in Europe. In some cases the emails target individuals for small amounts (say under $100) by threatening to frame them for keeping porn on their work computers. Other cases are more like the best buy scenario, but didn't ask for as much money.
As a resident of South Florida, this case makes my head ache. Based on the facts of the case as I understand them, the game should not be banned, either by the government or by Walmart. 1) The offensive phrase apparently refers to a competing criminal gang made up of Haitians, not to the Haitian community in general.(?) 2) If incitement to virtual behavior that would be illegal in reality is deemed inappropriate, the entire genre of first person shooters and much of several other genres would be illegal as well. 3) If virtual child porn is legal, how can virtual racism be illegal?
On the other hand, Haitians have to be the most oppressed people in the western hemisphere. First, their home country is a wasteland, then they have to risk life and limb to get here, then (unlike Cubans) they have to hide from immigration because they don't get amnesty just for reaching shore. Finally, if they do get through all that, even African-Americans pick on them. In public HS here "Are you Haitian?" is the same as "Are you stoopid?" (see Disclaimer)
Finally, the parent comment is one of the best balanced discussions of this issue in the whole thread. It doesn't just discuss the specific issue of the lawsuit, but it addresses the broader issues of morality in media consumption.
Disclaimer: The phrase "even African-Americans" is used to indicate that this is a case of black on black racism (or nationalism), it doesn't mean "even the lowly black folks pick on the Haitians".
Some pro and con points to this discussion: 1) A lot of times, a "coding bug" is actually the result of an undocumented assumption in the design that conflicts with an undocumented assumption in the requirements. Code bugs can be prevented in the earlier phases of a project by providing as much detail as possible in requirements and design. 2)Also, a lot of times people call it a code bug because they are too lazy (or don't have the audit trail available) to determine at what point the bug was actually introduced. 3) Also, if you call it a code bug, you don't have to go back to update your design and requirements documents, so it doesn't really cost any more to fix the bug in coding than it would in design. Of course if the documentation people use your design docs to write the user manual... 4) There are several sources of the increased cost the later bugs are discovered: - Backtracking and fixing prior documents and code that contain the bug or fail to document why the problem would be a bug. - More bugs in final package = more help desk agents and more developers in product support that could otherwise be allocated to new releases. - Updating other items that depended on the bug or contain duplicates of the bug. - The later in the development cycle, the more people are involved in fixing the problem. Usually a developer can modify a design doc with minimal approval, but a bug discovered late in systest would involve a CCB, testers, the documentation team and probably a project sponsor required to authorize the fix to go in.
There's nothing in the article to say that the technique was patented. Maybe it was tried under California trade secret laws?
Also, this is just the compensatory damages. They could be looking at another $10-30 Million in punitive damages.
As far as the "should it be patentable" discussion, I consider this at least as patentable as a minor modification to a patented drug, or finding a new use for an existing product and patenting that use. Those types of patents existed before software and business process patents.
But seriously: I suspect he only got 2nd because he was just implementing an existing design. If he had created an original design or done original research, he probably would have won.
It's a plasma generator that emits neutrons if he just copied Farnsworth. The article doesn't mention any modifications. Not a true advance in reactor technology
I think the main notable feature about this is that he's probably the youngest person to make one of these, and while it isn't a "fusion reactor" it probably is a good prototype research tool for physics departments with limited budgets.
This reminds me of the furor 25 years ago more or less when a Princeton undergrad designed a nuclear bomb for his senior thesis. It wasn't so much that it had never been done, as that nobody expected an undergrad to be able to do it without access to classified materials.
The information about the pre-existing accounts is in the E-week article that was linked to earlier. Scroll down below the ad to the next paragraph. The word-wrap on that page is lousy, so it looks like the article ends after 1 paragraph.
I know I'm being trolled, but I just can't restrain myself...
The current KNOPPIX website just alludes to the general political reaction against software patents in Europe. Knoppix was part of the protest movement. There is a link to the normal website embedded in the text.
There are no specific software patent issues with Knoppix.
Wine is good, because the biggest barrier to native application development for Linux is market penetration on the desktop. Reducing barriers businesses migrating from Windows to Linux is a good thing. Once Linux market share approaches the share for the Mac (or once an application can be written once for both Mac and Linux), then more native apps will appear for Linux.
On the other hand, this approach didn't work for OS/2.
On the gripping hand, the migration to 64-bit computing is a good opportunity to break MS stranglehold. Unless MS aligns strongly with AMD, they will shortly have their own compatibility issues with their current applications when user workstations upgrade to 64 bits. If Microsoft is confident of their market dominance, they will put almost all of their development efforts to the Intel 64-bit platform and only play lip service to AMD. If they have legitimate concerns about losing market share because users will refuse to upgrade their office applications, they will give real support to AMD.
Since AMD is such a weak competitor to Intel, it will take a VERY strong Linux to drive Microsoft into providing OS support for AMD. This means that if enough high quality Open Source 64 bit applications are available when the big migration occurs, the market will be much more open than it is now.
WINE is a great tool for educating the market and preparing businesses to accept the idea of Linux desktops.
If we'd known this would be a consequence of public and commercial access to the internet, we probably would've told DARPA to keep it.
As things stand, any business that depends on information, including new product ideas, advertising, scientific research, and banking, is going to move offshore until labor costs are in better balance. If all these information-based jobs move overseas, the only high paying jobs left in the US will be for doctors and lawyers (due to protectionist licensing practices already in place) and jobs in government.
So if the rest of us are all working for Walmart, who is going to be buying all the software that the Indians are creating, and the goods that the Chinese are manufacturing? There certainly won't be very many consumers left here with enough money to pay for such things.
One way to keep the jobs from leaving and reducing the impact of the salary differential is to reduce our immigration restrictions. This will (unfortunately) lower or stagnate salaries here, but it would 1) keep the jobs here, where taxes are paid on them. 2) reduce the labor pool in India and other countries, increasing salaries there. 3) Increase the number of workers in this country to the point where we can afford to pay social security to the baby boomers. 4) In general the best English speakers and most skilled workers would be admitted to this country, reducing the quality of the labor pool in the developing countries.
In the short term, the increased labor pool will cause unemployment and unrest, so it will be difficult to maintain this immigration policy. We have to face the fact that many current immigration laws are simply protectionism for skilled labor. Up until now, it wasn't feasible to send information back and forth to Asia in the quantities needed to move jobs over there. Now that the genie's out of the bottle, there's not a lot we can do to put it back in, so our best option is to try to bring the national economies of our competitors into closer parity with ours.
It's a global information economy. Do you know where your job is?
Look at how many manufacturing jobs moved to Asia since 1970. That is probably about the same ratio of IT jobs as will be lost by 2030. We are in the same position as an auto plant worker in the 1960's, except it is harder to control the import/export of information than of products. (Otherwise the RIAA wouldn't have any problem preventing us from copying music.)
Probably the best way to counteract this is to create as much wage inflation as possible in Asia rather than try protectionism in the US. It didn't work for cars or steel and it won't work for software.
Eventually this will all fix itself. If companies don't realize that their profit models depend on having rich customers in the developed nations, eventually they won't have any customers. The only way offshore outsourcing can work long term is if the wage inequities level out. If corporations don't overshoot the balance point out of greed (and of course that would NEVER happen), we'll be OK. Otherwise consumer demand in the developed world will collapse as jobs are lost, corporate profits will collapse in turn and we'll all be in the soup.
"Are we living in interesting times yet?" -- Ancient Chinese historian's 4 year old son
--See this site for some thoughts about the actual origin of "May you live in interesting times."
Another factor: Most Republicans hate the DOI. Remember James Watt? So DOI is just about last in the queue when it comes to fighting for budget dollars. Can you name one division of the DOI that has enough money to do its job? Certainly not the National Park Service or the BoIA. It wouldn't surprise me if their procurement processes result in $40 routers costing $4,000, so the budget crunch is even worse.
Slashdot Mirror
The molecular weight factor goes beyond H2 and H2O. Consider:
MW Oxygen=32
MW Carbon Dioxide=44
Mars atmosphere is heavy on the CO2 for a reason: it's gravity is weak enough to allow anything lighter (except maybe oxygen) to escape, given the right collisions in the upper atmosphere. If a CO2 molecule whacks a water molecule from behind, it could go into orbit.
The water in the soil also makes sense from my freshman chemistry. Solutions of water with soluble solids undergo "freezing point depression" and "boiling point elevation". I'm not sure what the underlying cause of these effects is, it seems to result in brine reaching a concentration in the soil where it is too old to rock'n'roll (boil/evaporate) and too young to die (freeze).
And in related news, two Florida DUI offenders are suing over this issue of ownership (one of the plaintiffs owns a business with a fleet of vehicles, and the law apparently requires igntion interlocks on all of them) and also double-jeopardy, because the local ignition interlock law passed after they had completed their sentences.
Quick, file a patent on this idea.
Nope, it says "one or more languages", so all that is required are two separate pieces of code in one document, not that they have to be in different languages.
I thought the MS patent was filed in 2000. 2001 is a little late for prior art in that case.
Even the MS Autoplay feature itself may be prior art. The earliest patent mentioned above (5,597,307) was filed in May 1995, and I'm sure that a Win 95 beta with Autoplay was already available at that time. For that matter, what about Win 3.1 or OS/2?
In 10 or 12 years, after everybody is totally dependent on Open Source, IBM could pursue an SCO-like strategy and make it stick:
"There's all this open-source software out there that violates our patents. Either pay up, remove the offending code, or discontinue the use of the offending software."
Since no OpenSource licenses indemnify against IP violations, and IBM's protection under patent law would be much stronger than SCO's copyright claims, most users will be SOL.
Keep your credit cards handy.
It isn't Open source that threatens the US continued ability to compete, it's the internet, combined with US immigration policy combined with the unequal distribution of wealth in the world.
If Open Source didn't exist, all the big corporations would still be outsourcing to India, China, etc. They just would be used to develop proprietary code. Even with open source in existence, non-Open companies like Microsoft, HP and EDS still do it.
The jobs are leaving now because of the difference in wages and because they CAN leave now. Before the spread of the internet and free trade, the barriers to offshore program development were prohibitive.
Yeah, like the Patriot Act II provisions that they snuck into the intelligence/defense research spending bill.
The point of voting Libertarian isn't to actually get them elected. It's to give 5-10% of the vote to them so that the other parties have to recognize that they're in danger. One party or the other will co-opt Libertarian platform issues if the party starts swinging elections, even if they don't win any.
Extending your analogy of security flaws in a house:
Suppose you are a gun owner (consider the guns analogous to credit card information on a commercial database: if they get stolen they affect other people) and accidentally forget to lock your door one day (analogous to truly bad security practices at some sites).
Now suppose a neighbor notices that the door is unlocked and goes and sits in your living room to prevent anyone from stealing the guns. When you get back home, he threatens to report you to the police for not securing your guns properly. Do you report him to the police for trespassing in your home?
This isn't precisely analogous to the extortionist at Best Buy, but it does mirror many of the scenarios where a "white-hat" hacker found a blatant security risk and was punished for it.
Incidentally, the Best Buy case is a variation of extortion emails that have been targetting various companies, particularly in Europe. In some cases the emails target individuals for small amounts (say under $100) by threatening to frame them for keeping porn on their work computers. Other cases are more like the best buy scenario, but didn't ask for as much money.
As a resident of South Florida, this case makes my head ache. Based on the facts of the case as I understand them, the game should not be banned, either by the government or by Walmart.
1) The offensive phrase apparently refers to a competing criminal gang made up of Haitians, not to the Haitian community in general.(?)
2) If incitement to virtual behavior that would be illegal in reality is deemed inappropriate, the entire genre of first person shooters and much of several other genres would be illegal as well.
3) If virtual child porn is legal, how can virtual racism be illegal?
On the other hand, Haitians have to be the most oppressed people in the western hemisphere. First, their home country is a wasteland, then they have to risk life and limb to get here, then (unlike Cubans) they have to hide from immigration because they don't get amnesty just for reaching shore. Finally, if they do get through all that, even African-Americans pick on them. In public HS here "Are you Haitian?" is the same as "Are you stoopid?" (see Disclaimer)
Finally, the parent comment is one of the best balanced discussions of this issue in the whole thread. It doesn't just discuss the specific issue of the lawsuit, but it addresses the broader issues of morality in media consumption.
Disclaimer: The phrase "even African-Americans" is used to indicate that this is a case of black on black racism (or nationalism), it doesn't mean "even the lowly black folks pick on the Haitians".
Some pro and con points to this discussion:
1) A lot of times, a "coding bug" is actually the result of an undocumented assumption in the design that conflicts with an undocumented assumption in the requirements. Code bugs can be prevented in the earlier phases of a project by providing as much detail as possible in requirements and design.
2)Also, a lot of times people call it a code bug because they are too lazy (or don't have the audit trail available) to determine at what point the bug was actually introduced.
3) Also, if you call it a code bug, you don't have to go back to update your design and requirements documents, so it doesn't really cost any more to fix the bug in coding than it would in design. Of course if the documentation people use your design docs to write the user manual...
4) There are several sources of the increased cost the later bugs are discovered:
- Backtracking and fixing prior documents and code that contain the bug or fail to document why the problem would be a bug.
- More bugs in final package = more help desk agents and more developers in product support that could otherwise be allocated to new releases.
- Updating other items that depended on the bug or contain duplicates of the bug.
- The later in the development cycle, the more people are involved in fixing the problem. Usually a developer can modify a design doc with minimal approval, but a bug discovered late in systest would involve a CCB, testers, the documentation team and probably a project sponsor required to authorize the fix to go in.
There's nothing in the article to say that the technique was patented. Maybe it was tried under California trade secret laws?
Also, this is just the compensatory damages. They could be looking at another $10-30 Million in punitive damages.
As far as the "should it be patentable" discussion, I consider this at least as patentable as a minor modification to a patented drug, or finding a new use for an existing product and patenting that use. Those types of patents existed before software and business process patents.
But seriously: I suspect he only got 2nd because he was just implementing an existing design. If he had created an original design or done original research, he probably would have won.
It's a plasma generator that emits neutrons if he just copied Farnsworth. The article doesn't mention any modifications. Not a true advance in reactor technology
I think the main notable feature about this is that he's probably the youngest person to make one of these, and while it isn't a "fusion reactor" it probably is a good prototype research tool for physics departments with limited budgets.
This reminds me of the furor 25 years ago more or less when a Princeton undergrad designed a nuclear bomb for his senior thesis. It wasn't so much that it had never been done, as that nobody expected an undergrad to be able to do it without access to classified materials.
The information about the pre-existing accounts is in the E-week article that was linked to earlier. Scroll down below the ad to the next paragraph. The word-wrap on that page is lousy, so it looks like the article ends after 1 paragraph.
I know I'm being trolled, but I just can't restrain myself...
The current KNOPPIX website just alludes to the general political reaction against software patents in Europe. Knoppix was part of the protest movement. There is a link to the normal website embedded in the text.
There are no specific software patent issues with Knoppix.
As usual, a tip of the hat to Monty Python's Flying Circus
So why not?
Wine is good, because the biggest barrier to native application development for Linux is market penetration on the desktop. Reducing barriers businesses migrating from Windows to Linux is a good thing. Once Linux market share approaches the share for the Mac (or once an application can be written once for both Mac and Linux), then more native apps will appear for Linux.
On the other hand, this approach didn't work for OS/2.
On the gripping hand, the migration to 64-bit computing is a good opportunity to break MS stranglehold. Unless MS aligns strongly with AMD, they will shortly have their own compatibility issues with their current applications when user workstations upgrade to 64 bits. If Microsoft is confident of their market dominance, they will put almost all of their development efforts to the Intel 64-bit platform and only play lip service to AMD. If they have legitimate concerns about losing market share because users will refuse to upgrade their office applications, they will give real support to AMD.
Since AMD is such a weak competitor to Intel, it will take a VERY strong Linux to drive Microsoft into providing OS support for AMD. This means that if enough high quality Open Source 64 bit applications are available when the big migration occurs, the market will be much more open than it is now.
WINE is a great tool for educating the market and preparing businesses to accept the idea of Linux desktops.
A couple of other ironies:
If we'd known this would be a consequence of public and commercial access to the internet, we probably would've told DARPA to keep it.
As things stand, any business that depends on information, including new product ideas, advertising, scientific research, and banking, is going to move offshore until labor costs are in better balance. If all these information-based jobs move overseas, the only high paying jobs left in the US will be for doctors and lawyers (due to protectionist licensing practices already in place) and jobs in government.
So if the rest of us are all working for Walmart, who is going to be buying all the software that the Indians are creating, and the goods that the Chinese are manufacturing? There certainly won't be very many consumers left here with enough money to pay for such things.
One way to keep the jobs from leaving and reducing the impact of the salary differential is to reduce our immigration restrictions. This will (unfortunately) lower or stagnate salaries here, but it would
1) keep the jobs here, where taxes are paid on them.
2) reduce the labor pool in India and other countries, increasing salaries there.
3) Increase the number of workers in this country to the point where we can afford to pay social security to the baby boomers.
4) In general the best English speakers and most skilled workers would be admitted to this country, reducing the quality of the labor pool in the developing countries.
In the short term, the increased labor pool will cause unemployment and unrest, so it will be difficult to maintain this immigration policy.
We have to face the fact that many current immigration laws are simply protectionism for skilled labor. Up until now, it wasn't feasible to send information back and forth to Asia in the quantities needed to move jobs over there. Now that the genie's out of the bottle, there's not a lot we can do to put it back in, so our best option is to try to bring the national economies of our competitors into closer parity with ours.
Look at how many manufacturing jobs moved to Asia since 1970. That is probably about the same ratio of IT jobs as will be lost by 2030. We are in the same position as an auto plant worker in the 1960's, except it is harder to control the import/export of information than of products. (Otherwise the RIAA wouldn't have any problem preventing us from copying music.)
Probably the best way to counteract this is to create as much wage inflation as possible in Asia rather than try protectionism in the US. It didn't work for cars or steel and it won't work for software.
Eventually this will all fix itself. If companies don't realize that their profit models depend on having rich customers in the developed nations, eventually they won't have any customers. The only way offshore outsourcing can work long term is if the wage inequities level out. If corporations don't overshoot the balance point out of greed (and of course that would NEVER happen), we'll be OK. Otherwise consumer demand in the developed world will collapse as jobs are lost, corporate profits will collapse in turn and we'll all be in the soup.
"Are we living in interesting times yet?" -- Ancient Chinese historian's 4 year old son
--See this site for some thoughts about the actual origin of "May you live in interesting times."
Another factor: Most Republicans hate the DOI. Remember James Watt? So DOI is just about last in the queue when it comes to fighting for budget dollars. Can you name one division of the DOI that has enough money to do its job? Certainly not the National Park Service or the BoIA. It wouldn't surprise me if their procurement processes result in $40 routers costing $4,000, so the budget crunch is even worse.